


The Behaviour of Wolves

by framboise



Series: A Dæmon Bestiary of Westeros [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Daemons, F/M, Gen, House Targaryen, Identity Issues, Pseudo-Incest, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Jon and Sansa dislike each other as children, going to great lengths to avoid one another; to Catelyn’s approval. But one day in the woods she finds their two dæmons – in the forms of direwolves, as all Starks favour – curling up against one another, leaping up to play and dance with each other; even though Jon and Sansa are themselves sitting at a distance apart.But to Ned, who sees the same scene, there is something far more dangerous at stake. For he knows the behaviour of real wolves, of how they might act in a litter; and the direwolves of his daughter and nephew are not behaving like the dæmons of any human siblings should.





	The Behaviour of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  This is part of a series of canon-divergent His Dark Materials AUs with various pairings, but works as a standalone fic too.
> 
> Also I've taken some liberties with the laws of the HDM verse.

 

 

When Ser Arthur Dayne had let him leave the Tower of Joy, with Jon bundled in his arms and his wet nurse on the back of his horse, and Howland Reed riding alongside him; Ned had known that his troubles were only beginning; that the vow he had made to his sister to keep Jon safe would weigh heavily on his heart.

But he does not know just how hard it will be until he finds, one morning in the woods, the direwolf dæmons belonging to his young nephew and daughter playing with one another – tumbling over one another, tugging each other's tails, nipping each others necks, rubbing each other's ruffs.

The Starks have always had direwolves for dæmons, except for one or two exceptions, and have hunted real direwolves too in the forests of the north, and therefore Ned knows well the behaviour of wolves – both real and dæmon. He knows how the real animals might behave in a litter, how they might eventually mate with their siblings. Ned knows too, he admits to himself, that the wolves of his daughter and nephew are not behaving like the dæmons of any human siblings should.

Catelyn comes to him later that day to report that she had seen the same scene, and to ask once again that Jon might be fostered elsewhere, to express in the strongest words possible her distress at his continued presence. She says that she has had a talk with Sansa too and has reminded her that any close relationship with her bastard brother may dash their hopes of a good match for her.

If Catelyn only knew how truly close Jon and Sansa's relationship might one day grow, if they are not stopped from following this path. If only he could share his burdens with his wife; as is only right; as she wishes he would because she cares for him, loves him, even though she believes he once betrayed her.

Ned cannot sleep that night. His gut burns with a heightening of the fear, the foreboding, that he has felt ever since that day at the tourney at Harrenhal when he watched Rhaegar place the circlet of blue roses on the head of Lyanna's wolf dæmon instead of around the neck of Elia's desert fox.

Was he wrong to keep Jon here so long? Wrong to ignore all of Arthur Dayne’s pleading ravens, disguised by the Reed seal Howland had gifted him, which have only increased in volume the older Jon has grown. Has Ned; by the folly of his own pride, his belief that he alone could keep Lyanna's promise; cursed another generation to tragedy? Was he seeing before his eyes the nascent love story of another Targaryen and Stark, that might rip apart the realm once more.

But Ned is not yet a man who panics. He takes his time to think, to understand things, to plan. And while he is planning on what to do with his nephew; while he keeps a close eye on Jon and Sansa, who are too young themselves to know just what the behaviour of their dæmons might one day mean; his brother Benjen visits Winterfell, passing through the north on business for the Night's Watch.

It is good to see his little brother again; it has been too long since the last. Ned feels proud to show off his little family to him; to share how much they have grown, their personalities, their childish dreams, and his and Catelyn's own plans for them.

He walks with his brother through the woods asking about his time at the Wall; talking of things he never allows himself to talk about with anyone else, even sometimes Catelyn – of Lyanna and Brandon and their father. Ned's dæmon Ice walks alongside Benjen's dæmon Ranger; they brush against one another, their tails flicking back and forth happily.

After their walk they come out into the courtyard of Winterfell where Robb is training alongside Theon and Jon; competing against one another with all of the force of their childish might since they have yet to reach the age when their heads will be turned, their energies channelled into catching the attention of girls and women.

The boys spar; Jon knocks Robb on his back, Ghost holding Grey Wind's neck in his jaw, and then is roundly knocked on his own back straight after, Grey Wind planting his claws in Ghost's chest.

“He’ll go the Wall one day then.” Benjen says, nodding at Jon with certainty, even though Ned has never mentioned the idea, which he himself has been thinking of for years, to him at all.

"He might choose to go the wall," he replies to Benjen. "Nothing is settled yet."

Benjen only looks at him with that knowing look of his, that narrowing of his eyes that says he knows Ned is lying. Ned thinks that Jon would do well at the Wall; would make a name for himself, for the name of Snow. He is a good boy, if somewhat sullen; he will grow up to be a good man, he is sure of it. And a large part of him prefers the thought of Jon safe at the Wall instead of squiring for Ser Arthur Dayne as he had once sworn to the knight he would allow his nephew to choose to do; because he fears that the Sword of the Morning has his own ambitious aims, his own plans for Jon and the future of House Targaryen.

 _Settled_ is the important word.

Ned does not want Jon to be killed for who he is, for being a Targaryen. Even though Jon's dæmon has shown no signs of strangeness before, no hint; beyond the fact that it is male, and there are a good number of men with male dæmons, it doesn’t really mean anything; that he might not settle at an appropriate age.

The Targaryens had been known for their dæmons who _never_ settled.

In the past – though not for the last century and a half – they, like the Valyrians of old, had also been known for the mythical beasts their dæmons could change into, even centuries after those beasts had themselves died out in the wild – like sphinxes, and unicorns. Like dragons.

It was thought to be a marker of their madness - the dæmons that did not settle, the mythical beasts – and every Westeros child was told of it as a warning; though that did not stop a few foolhardy men from taking potions to try and force their dæmons into long-gone beasts so they might boast about it and steal a small measure of the power the Targaryens had once had for themselves.

But Ghost, to Ned's relief, takes only the very commonest of forms – dog, cat, robin, hawk; and most often, direwolf. He believes that Jon is at heart far more a Stark than he shall ever be a Targaryen, just as he carries no trace in his looks of that House too.

Personalities, looks, and other more nebulous qualities, are not always inherited from parents, from Houses anyway; sometimes a man is simply himself alone.

Benjen's own dæmon Ranger had flickered into all manner of things before she settled as a direwolf on the day that Lyanna disappeared; strange, exotic creatures from faraway lands, which the inhabitants of Winterfell had rarely seen or only read about it books. Animals that delighted Lyanna with their novelty: black leopards, tiny golden monkeys, manticores, red bears, giant colourful butterflies.

As a sometimes studious child, Ned had liked to name them and write them down in a little list; he would dream of the lands they came from and what it would be like to travel there. As a second son, he might travel on his brother's behalf to meet with Lords from other houses and make allegiances, before he would need to settle down himself with the daughter of a northern lord.

But he remembers one day in particular, one iteration of Benjen's dæmon, when he had come upon the two of them in the library, while his other siblings were off adventuring in the woods.

At first, when he entered the library and its dim afternoon light, he had thought that the dæmon sitting next to Benjen's chair was a young lion and then, when he moved closer, he had seen what looked to be wings sprouting from her back, so his initial glimpse must have been mistaken. He couldn't see the form of her face because she was turned away but something in him, something that trembled, did not want to.

“Where in the world does that animal come from?” he had asked Benjen, curious, his heart beating strangely in his chest.

“From a book,” Benjen had said, such a scroll held open on his lap.

The both of them had paused, Ned remembers, looking at one another and not at the dæmon that lay between them.

There were many books in the Winterfell library about other lands: traveller's reports, hunting chronicles, boring tomes about trade and food stores.

“A book about the past.” Benjen then said, without any hint of shame.

Ned had stared at him with horror and after a moment Benjen’s dæmon had flickered back to the familiar form of the snow leopard that he had so far favoured that moon.

They had never spoken of it again.

 

*

 

Ned sees Benjen off again, promising to let him know if he makes a decision about Jon's future, if his nephew will join him in the Night's Watch. Meanwhile Ned continues to spend sleepless nights and tired mornings wandering the godswood praying for guidance, praying that he might only keep Jon safe.

But a few moons later a large part of Ned's problem seems to solve itself when Jon comes to him and tells him that Ghost has settled as a large white direwolf; because now he can send him out into the world, now that Jon's dæmon cannot give away his nephew's true identity.

After moons of discussion, after ravens back and forth, and prayers in the Godswood, arguments with Jon and measured conversations with Catelyn; he decides to allow Jon the fate his nephew, but in truth his son in his heart, has chosen.

Jon is thrilled to be travelling off with the Sword of the Morning (thrilled as well at the jealousy of the other boys); to squire for this legendary knight, even if he sometimes seems to look at him as if he knows something about him that Jon himself does not.

Ned waves him goodbye with a happy wife by his side who is plotting of Sansa's future husband, dreaming about Robb's now uncontested inheritance. Ned allows himself to be cautiously happy too that he has kept his promise to his sister, that Jon and his direwolf dæmon, who proclaims him as a Stark even though his name cannot, will be safe.

But Ned does not know about the event that caused Jon’s direwolf to settle; the kiss he had shared with Sansa, with his sister, in the godswood. The shame Jon had known, the horror, at his feelings, at what his body felt, at the dreams of being married to a flame-haired beauty whose meanings he could now no longer ignore.

And Jon himself does not know, or does not admit to himself that he knows, that in the moons since he has settled he has seen, from the corner of his eye, the outline of Ghost start to flicker; that he has felt that strange itch within himself that he should not feel beyond his settling; that sometimes in the middle of the night he has woken with his arms around a creature that does not have fur; that he dreams of beasts from the songs – of unicorns, of sphinxes, and, more and more, of dragons.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment, I'd love to hear what people think!
> 
> Also, just to note: Jon/Sansa will probably not be the main pairing of the rest of this series although I am planning one more longer story about them for this 'verse.
> 
> The second story in the series: A Secret Shared (Oberyn/Ellaria/Sansa) will be posted soon-ish...


End file.
